Retriever training

I really like this book. The author puts it in laymans terms and techniques

Thanks, but I think y'all underestimate my laziness

Joe and Tina Perron in Bentley, LA. Look them up at
championretrievers.com. They are great people and excellent dog people. A bit pricey but worth it. Mr. Bill Autrey is also an excellent trainer but I think his cancer has come back.

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First 6-8 months you need to give the dog obedience training and fun retrieves.

One of the top training tips I like is to have your dog wait before you command it to do anything. Ie wait to eat, wait to enter inside or outside. It's crucial for the blind, bc a dog that goes before it's told won't eye the downed bird correctly. Also, getting it really good at the heal command on both sides is good.

Once he or she is about 8 months do yourself a favor and get it professionally forced fetched. Then make a decision on what you want to do next (train yourself or professionally). But, no matter what, FF will make it a whole lot easier to train and listen period.

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Best advice posted. Simple retrieves and get the dog into water and used to gun fire. I have trained 4 Labs with 2 going to Finished and I didn't start handling work till after they were a year old.

Everything building off of the simple mark and retrieve to hand is easily done with simple training methods except for FF, which absolutely should be done by a Pro.

Read this. If you have time to own a dog you have time to train it, and he will respond better to you in the field.

I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and my dog surprises me. She's not perfect, but I'm proud of what she can do. Like other's have said, basic obedience is the key. Once she learned to sit, stay, and heel, the other stuff came easily. She naturally likes to retrieve, so controlling it is a lot easier once you have the obedience down.

Literally only work with her for about 15-20 minutes a day, 3 days a week at most. She's picking up on hand signals pretty well. Again, I had absolutely no experience. This is my first dog as an adult.

Also, I did not force fetch my dog and it shows. When she doesn't want to retrieve any more, she's done. Which doesn't happen often, but you don't want them to decide when it's time to work and when it's not. And from what I've read, force fetching would have helped a lot to collar condition my dog. Only thing I can correct with the collar is the heel command, other than that, she loses track of whatever she's doing once she's hit with it. I may send her to someone to get it done, she's a little over a year now.